STRAIGHT RAZOR
He slid the stiff blade up to my ear:
Oh, fear,
this should have been thirst, a cheapening act.
But I lacked,
as usual, the crucial disbelief. Sticky, cold,
a billfold
wet in my mouth, wrists bound by his belt,
I felt
like the boy in a briny night pool, he who found
the drowned
body, yet still somehow swam with an unknown joy.
That boy.